World Journal of Neuroscience, 2018, 8, 350-362
http://www.scirp.org/journal/wjns
ISSN Online: 2162-2019
ISSN Print: 2162-2000
DOI: 10.4236/wjns.2018.83028 Aug. 1, 2018 350 World Journal of Neuroscience
Emotion Evaluation of Four Generations of
Woman from a 104-Year Old Ancestress
Gilles Sicard
1
, Guy Escoffier
1
, Elodie Salebert
1
, Abdessadek El Ahmadi
2
, Sadelli Kevin
1
,
François S. Roman
1*
1
INP Institut de Neurophysiopathologie, Faculté de Médecine de Marseille, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
2
Laboratoire de Neurosciences Sensorielles et Cognitives, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
Abstract
Normal aging is associated with declines of perception and cognition. In-
versely, emotions seem to be preserved compared to younger adults. Viewing,
neutral, dramatic and comic films, emotions were evaluated in four genera-
tions of woman from a 104-year old ancestress. At the very old age, from this
case report, emotions were differently expressed while arousal was still pre-
served. A constant emotion of scare was expressed during the viewing of
these three films (p < 0.001) with significant higher level of disgust (p ≤ 0.01).
Only perceptual deficiency cannot explain this difference as cognitive tasks
revealed a mild cognitive impairment detected by the Mini Mental State Ex-
amination and a substantial impairment on the executive functions by using
the Delayed response tasks. These results emphasize that some emotions in a
normal aging centenarian are still present, even if not appropriates, and dif-
ferent in comparison to a young adult control group. From this study, it is
expected that emotion analysis in old adults viewing selected short films will
predict longevity and could discriminate normal processes occurring during
normal aging from neurodegenerative diseases.
Keywords
Emotion, Very Old Aging, Facial Analyses, 104-Year Old Case Report
1. Introduction
Although, normal age-related changes in cognition are not uniform across all
cognitive domains or across all individuals, it is well known that basic cognitive
functions most affected by age are attention and memory [1]. Perception also
shows significant age-related declines attributable mainly to decline of sensory
How to cite this paper: Sicard, G., Escof-
fier, G., Salebert, E., El Ahmadi, A., Kevin,
S. and Roman, F.S. (2018) Emotion Evalua-
tion of Four Generations of Woman from a
104-Year Old Ancestress. World Journal of
Neuroscience, 8, 350-362.
https://doi.org/10.4236/wjns.2018.83028
Received: April 3, 2018
Accepted: July 29, 2018
Published: August 1, 2018
Copyright © 2018 by authors and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access